Night Two

Chapter 2

1.     The aspect of relationship that has taught me the most about how God loves me is the affectionate aspect. It is really rare for me to know that someone is crazy about me and loves me to pieces, in a more lighthearted way. I am used to being respected and admired and appreciated, but not usually adored. My relationships have made me feel adored and the men have shown appropriate affection for me. When I broke up with one man in particular, God would physically hug me, and it was so marvelous and foreign to me. The other element is the desire to help and give and serve a certain other person in a special, primary way. That speaks to the nature of God in community, how he serves and cares for us, and how he created me as a woman to reflect his nature.

2.     Take some time to miss your significant other, and soon you will remember all of the good times and they will eclipse the bad times. Also, fake it until you make it, and come up with all sorts of outrageous things that you do like and focus on those.

3.     Affection is one way that God pours his love out, lavishes his love, upon us.

4.     For me, the motivation is that “we belong to each other.” We chose each other, made a promise, and bound ourselves, body and soul in marriage. It is undoubtedly God’s will for us to be each others’s “One” at that point, so nothing could make me walk away from it.

5.     Am I motivated by what makes me happy or what pleases God, in my relationship experience? I say both because I am not willing to concede God…I stood up for my faith when it was perilous in two good relationships, and I am motivated by happiness because I was thoughtless in my physical expression at times.

6.     I want my marriage to reveal God’s servant heart, and his sacrificial, UNCONDITIONAL, and lavish love. Also his joy, his peace, his serenity, his confidence. I want to be ONE in every sense of the word and have that be the way people perceive us, as one. The two shall become one flesh. Amen.